Dinner consisted of Ramiro pepper stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in streaky bacon; served with left over broccoli, oven roasted cherry tomatoes and bruschetta topped with pesto and squashed cherry toms. Delicious. Although baby spat out the cherry tomatoes and some ended up on the floor, so I think we can say he is not a tomato fan!

I have a busy bank holiday weekend ahead, starting with a champagne fuelled lunch today for my good friend's 30th at the fabulous Rock & Rose. The food there is delicious and I had to have a sneaky peak at the menu to tease my tastebuds!

Secondly, it's baby boy's 1st birthday this weekend! I can't believe how quickly the year has gone - time certainly does fly. My organic fruit and veg box will be magically transforming into picnic treats on Saturday - let's hope for some sunshine!

Thirdly, I have two more birthday invites for this weekend- lazy Sunday afternoon drinks and family fun on Monday. I predict lots of eating, drinking and laughter!

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Almost a year ago to the day our lovely son was born. Almost
six months ago, to the day, it was time to begin the dreaded weaning process. Being
my second child, I was far more relaxed as a mum and I decided to go down the
baby led weaning route. Now is not the time to harp on about the benefits of
blw, or have a blw vs spoon feeding debate, but this method made sense to me.
Having done a bit of research and completing a paediatric first aid course (just in case I should
have to cope with the dreaded choking incident) I began to realise that this
was the most natural course for me to take. I didn’t want to be spoon feeding
my baby jar upon jar of processed rubbish and didn't really have time to cook something different and puree it.

My husband, daughter
and I had been a family unit for a good few years before baby no 2 arrived and
so there was no changing our lives to suit him, he had to fit in around us and
baby led weaning was perfect for this. He could eat when we did.

I did have one concern though. Our diet. Don’t get me wrong,
we have never existed solely on take away food and frozen, processed birds eye
c**p but I would say two to three meals a week consisted of the aforementioned,
ahem, foods.

I saw this as the perfect opportunity to start eating
organically. I wanted to be certain that the foods I was offering to my child
were natural in every way.

I took a leaf out of my mother in law's book and decided to
place an order with Abel & Cole and braced myself for the extortionate
cost. Organic food is expensive, right?

Wrong. Although
undoubtedly more than your supermarket shop, I discovered that my first shop
was not as expensive as I had envisaged.

Organic food is fulfilling and fabulous. It is not cheap but
that’s because it is natural and not sprayed in chemicals to give it a longer shelf life. Supermarkets have
lulled us into a false sense of reality by making us think that a chicken costs
£3 and a leg of lamb costs £8. Try to clear your mind. How much do you think a
chicken or a lamb’s life is worth? I am no vegetarian and could not survive without
a juicy piece of meat most days but
I feel happy that the animal I am eating has had a good life and I know that it
is good and natural for me to eat it. I don’t think I could feel comfortable
eating a factory farmed animal now, or an animal that I didn’t know the origins
of.

To get back to the point, the reason that I don’t find
organic food as expensive as I had envisaged is because I have found that I don’t
need to buy as much food as I previously had from supermarkets. As a result I spend
about the same amount each week as I had done previously from Sainsburys. An
old dinner of sausages, mash and beans used to consist of three sausages each
for my husband and I; now we have two sausages each - in fact, I reckon I could manage with one. The quality is a million
times better and the taste is out of this world, but actually, this is just what
‘meat’ tastes like. I had forgotten, or simply become accustomed to supermarket
meat.

Our roast chicken was succulent and juicilicious! (Yes, I had to create a word to capture it's awesomeness.) Stuffed with lemon and thyme and served with crispy roast pots and carrots, brocolli and peas the family loved it, plus my first attempt at giblet stock and gravy wasn't bad. The left over chicken was used to make a chicken/tomato pasta bake the following evening - and so in my opinion the £9 chicken was well worth every penny as we got two meals out of it, probably could have stretched to three had we not all been such greedy goats.

The weekly Fruit & Veg Box is such a surprise – and relief.
You never know what you are going to get each week (although you can have a
sneaky peek on the website if you want to). We are all eating so much more
fruit and veg than we had done previously. Yes I’ve always known we are
supposed to eat five a day, but not being a fan of many vegetables before, I
always found it hard to implement into my family’s lifestyle and consequently my ten
year old daughter has always been a somewhat fussy eater.

Oh how times have changed! The Fruit & Veg Box is great
because when it arrives I can plan what we are having each night. At first I
looked at the bag of potatoes and thought ‘that’s never going to last us all
week’ but how wrong was I?! We must have been eating a mountain of potatoes
before! Now I cook on average one ‘normal’ size or two small potatoes per
person (whether it be homemade chips, wedges, mash or roast) and this is more than
enough. I always want to use up everything in the box because I know that it is such great produce, and so will look up
recipes to help me cook these strange looking green things that I have never
seen or heard of before. Abel & Cole even send you a free recipe book! I
feel like a child all over again, tasting new things! I love vegetables!
(something those who know me will know I would never have said before!) But
more importantly my children are learning to love them and are eating a healthy
and well balanced diet.

I am now on my fifth order and this is what arrives each
week:

1 Medium Fruit & Veg Box – last week consisting of:

Asparagus Carrots Fairtrade Bananas

Gala Apples

Green Pointed Cabbage

Leeks

Nicola Potatoes

Star Ruby Grapefruit

White Mushrooms

Yellow Pepper

1 Full cream milk litre (for the baby)

1 Little Yeo’s, Yeo Valley Yoghurts 4 x90g (for the baby)

1 Eggs, Organic Free Range (6 medium)

I then pop online on Sunday or Monday night and order
whatever else we fancy for the coming week. Easy. And so much less stressful than dragging yourself round a supermarket.

So, a long first post. Well done if you got this far! To answer the questions in the title and sum up, in my opinion, yes, it is slightly more expensive to buy organic food but no, it's also not as expensive because your eating habits will completely change. As to the second question, simply yes. From my experience it is definitely worth it.

Happy
eating and remember, fill your body with goodness. If you’re good to your body
it’ll be good to you.